Apple Pay Expansion Worldwide Will Have Vast Repercussions

By John Martellaro

Dec 18th, 2014 5:30 PM EST

Image credit: Apple

Apple Pay has been a huge success in the United States. The mobile payment purchase is supported by credit cards used for 90 percent of purchases. Now, thanks to a job posting that's been spotted byiClarified , it seems Apple is ready to expand Apple Pay into Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India.

Apple Pay was announced by Apple on September 9th and made available in the U.S. on October 20th. In just two months, it has taken the country by storm even though customers must have an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus to use Apple Pay in brick-and-mortar stores via NFC.

While the timetable is uncertain, the expansion of Apple Pay into the world market, will be very good for Apple in several ways. First, it will serve to spur sales of the iPhone 6 family of iPhones. Second, it will help solidify Apple Pay as a global mobile payment standard. Third it will strongly encourage merchants to switch to a much more secure payment method—or be left behind by competitors. Finally, the very tiny take by Apple, reported at about one-tenth of one percent, looks to generate substantial additional revenue for Apple, especially in Europe.

So far, there have been no reported snafus with Apple Pay in the U.S. Right after Apple Pay was launched, it quickly accounted for one percent of sales at Whole Foods. It just works. It's been reported that this kind of payment is already designed to work with existing payment terminals in the rest of the world that use NFC, so the transition would look to be relatively painless.

Apple, for a long time, has focused on earning the trust of its customers with very robust methods to protect the security and privacy of customer data. Apple has been able to leverage the technology it has built into success with Apple Pay. The move to make it available worldwide suggests great confidence by Apple as well as great enthusiasm by the partnering banks.